Indymedia as target
Friend inside the beast | 22.08.2002 09:24
Indymedia-UK is one target of a working party of the intelligence services of this country. What follows is what has been leaked to me by a friend in another country's intelligence service.
Indymedia-UK is one target of a working party of the intelligence services of this country. What follows is what has been leaked to me by a friend in another country's intelligence service. How much truth it contains I have no way of knowing, but what was said to me made a lot of sense.
The strategies used with Indymedia include the following:
(1) real-time surveillance and permanent record of all activity on site; cataloguing of archive relative to posters, subjects, mapping of threads and correlation with other IMC sites; identification of posters on database via other signals intelligence; integration of intelligence with public order and anti-terrorism policing
(2) interference:
(a) posting "static": insertion of several postings of more or less relevance around posts which are viewed as dangerous; or simply to clog up the newswire
(b) weakening legitimacy of site (so it is viewed as eccentric and irrelevant by mainstream citizens and the mainstream media): insertions of inflammatory postings; extremist postings of the left and right; association of site with minority ultra-left parties
(3) active postings under pseudonyms to develop the internal contradictions within the left:
(a) promote tensions between the SWP and other parties of the Left and the anarchists: the more debate is built up within these elements, the less relevant the site will be to a wider public
(b) use class, race and gender to divide participants
(c) try to separate local politics from national and global foreign policy issues
(d) build up one or two voices on the medium so that in a crisis they can intervene to tip debate in one or another direction.
The strategies used with Indymedia include the following:
(1) real-time surveillance and permanent record of all activity on site; cataloguing of archive relative to posters, subjects, mapping of threads and correlation with other IMC sites; identification of posters on database via other signals intelligence; integration of intelligence with public order and anti-terrorism policing
(2) interference:
(a) posting "static": insertion of several postings of more or less relevance around posts which are viewed as dangerous; or simply to clog up the newswire
(b) weakening legitimacy of site (so it is viewed as eccentric and irrelevant by mainstream citizens and the mainstream media): insertions of inflammatory postings; extremist postings of the left and right; association of site with minority ultra-left parties
(3) active postings under pseudonyms to develop the internal contradictions within the left:
(a) promote tensions between the SWP and other parties of the Left and the anarchists: the more debate is built up within these elements, the less relevant the site will be to a wider public
(b) use class, race and gender to divide participants
(c) try to separate local politics from national and global foreign policy issues
(d) build up one or two voices on the medium so that in a crisis they can intervene to tip debate in one or another direction.
Friend inside the beast
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